’Come, no nonsense.  I always made my girls go and have tete-a-tetes with the men who were to be their husbands, whether they would or no:  there’s a great deal to be talked over before every marriage, and you two are certainly old enough to be above affectation.  Go away with you.’  So there was nothing for it but for them to return to the library; Mrs. Kirkpatrick pouting a little, and Mr. Gibson feeling more like his own cool, sarcastic self, by many degrees, than he had done when last in that room.

She began, half crying,—­

’I cannot tell what poor Kirkpatrick would say if he knew what I have done.  He did so dislike the notion of second marriages, poor fellow.’

’Let us hope that he does not know, then; or that, if he does know, he is wiser—­I mean, that he sees how second marriages may be most desirable and expedient in some cases.’

Altogether, this second tete-a-tete, done to command, was not so satisfactory as the first; and Mr. Gibson was quite alive to the necessity of proceeding on his round to see his patients before very much time had elapsed.

‘We shall shake down into uniformity before long, I’ve no doubt,’ said he to himself, as he rode away.  ’It’s hardly to be expected that our thoughts should run in the same groove all at once.  Nor should I like it,’ he added.  ’It would be very flat and stagnant to have only an echo of one’s own opinions from one’s wife.  Heigho!  I must tell Molly about it:  dear little woman, I wonder how she’ll take it!  It’s done, in a great measure, for her good.’  And then he lost himself in recapitulating Mrs. Kirkpatrick’s good qualities, and the advantages to be gained to his daughter from the step he had just taken.

It was too late to go round by Hamley that afternoon.  The Towers and the Towers’ round lay just in the opposite direction to Hamley.  So it was the next morning before Mr. Gibson arrived at the hall, timing his visit as well as he could so as to have half-an-hour’s private talk with Molly before Mrs. Hamley came down into the drawing-room.  He thought that his daughter would require sympathy after receiving the intelligence he had to communicate; and he knew there was no one more fit to give it than Mrs. Hamley.

It was a brilliantly hot summer’s morning; men in their shirt-sleeves were in the fields getting in the early harvest of oats; as Mr. Gibson rode slowly along, he could see them over the tall hedge-rows, and even hear the soothing measured sound of the fall of the long swathes, as they were mown.  The labourers seemed too hot to talk; the dog, guarding their coats and cans, lay panting loudly on the other side of the elm, under which Mr. Gibson stopped for an instant to survey the scene, and gain a little delay before the interview that he wished was well over.  In another minute he had snapped at himself for his weakness, and put spurs to his horse.  He came up to the hall at a good sharp trot; it was earlier than the